Nostalgia: Boot OLD version (9.04, 10.04) from GRUB on 22.04

Bob Sully

4/23/24, 1:12 AM

all - I recently unearthed a couple of old boxes (running 9.04 and 10.04) that had been sitting in a closet for about 10 years. I also have an older machine on which I have Lubuntu 22.04 and....MS-DOS 6.22 (don't laugh...I use this machine to maintain a couple of 1980s-vintage PCs, so need floppy drives). It is, in order to boot DOS, running on an MBR-formatted SSD.

I would like, for nostalgia's sake - not critical, just an exercise - to be able to boot these old Ubuntu versions. I pulled the hard drives from the 9.04/10.04 machines, copied the root partitions using GParted to the SSD on the Lubuntu 22.04 machine, maintaining the UUIDs on the root partitions, copied the contents of /home, /usr, /usr/local and /opt to subdirectories of the old root partitions and fixing /etc/fstab (so it wouldn't be looking for those directories on separate partitions) in both cases, then ran update-grub when booted to Lubuntu. It sees the old partitions and creates entries for them. However, neither one will boot. I just get a blank screen for about 30 seconds, then the machine reboots.

I tried booting from one of the old hard drives (Ubuntu 10.04) and other than screen-resolution issues (xrandr only saw 800x600 max), it booted fine, so it's not the hardware I'm trying to run it on that's the problem.

My guess is that Lubuntu's newer GRUB is having problems with the old 2.6.31x kernels. Is there a way to get these to boot? Just curious.

Thanks in advance!

0 + 8

10.04

boot

kernel

ArrayBolt3

4/23/24, 1:40 AM

Do you have enough physical space in your computer's chassis to just install the old hard drives alongside the existing SSD? If so, maybe try that and then run update-grub and see if you get any better results.

ArrayBolt3

4/23/24, 1:40 AM

(Also, please please PLEASE make sure you have good backups of all of this - if something goes wrong and corrupts data, you will want to have a way to restore! I'd make full disk images of both of the old hard drives.)

ArrayBolt3

4/23/24, 1:42 AM

For those who may want to close this as off-topic due to the EOL operating systems involved, keep in mind that the question is about how to get a component of Ubuntu 22.04 (which is supported) to boot the EOL systems. In the same way it would be on-topic to ask about a question involving dual-booting Ubuntu and Windows 7, I believe this is on-topic as well.

guiverc

4/23/24, 4:31 AM

How far did you get? I'd expect it to work (*assuming your hardware is capable of running the older code! as some newer hardware will not boot those OSes due to *deprecated* or *no* secure uEFI keys... Some modern hardware won't boot OSes in *legacy/CSM* mode for example. Let alone issues with video hardware (*some older cards having been dropped by windows & linux for security reasons; what video cards was it configured for?*).. Did you try booting to runlevel 1? removing `quiet splash` etc I can't see why modern grub 2.06 can't recognize the older systems; maybe try chainload.

Bob Sully

4/23/24, 6:02 AM

@ArrayBolt3 - Thanks, all of the drives are backed up (imaged). Tried adding in one of the drives, booted to Lubuntu, ran update-grub. It found 10.04 on the second drive, but trying to boot from it gave me the same result (blank screen, 30 seconds, then reboot).

Bob Sully

4/23/24, 6:07 AM

@guiverc - the original 10.04 HDD boots fine on this hardware (it's not looking for UEFI keys - it's an old motherboard (2009 vintage)). Both it and the new SSD are using MBR partition tables.

Bob Sully

4/23/24, 6:14 AM

@guiverc - yes, I had previously removed "quiet splash".

Bob Sully

4/23/24, 4:53 PM

I still suspect that there is some issue with GRUB (22.04) which is causing the problem. Since everything is running on MBR drives, Lubuntu 22.04 should have installed the legacy version of GRUB rather than the version needed for EFI setups....I'd assume. All of the entries in grub.cfg refer to msdos partition types.

Elon Musk

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EN: Nostalgia: Boot OLD version (9.04, 10.04) from GRUB on 22.04

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